1. Field
Example embodiments relate to solar cells having nanowires and methods of fabricating nanowires.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a solar cell is fabricated by doping an impurity into a substrate such as a silicon wafer. A solar cell fabricated in this way exhibits an efficiency from about 15% to about 20% because of single band gap limits and losses due to defects. Recently, research for controlling a band gap by forming a solar cell including nanostructures such as nanowires, or for manipulating physical characteristics of nanostructures, are being performed for improving efficiency of a solar cell.
Meanwhile, when growing a nanostructure such as a nanowire, a metal catalyst layer is formed having a desired thickness on a surface of a substrate by using a method such as nanoparticle coating, resistive heating, electron beam deposition, or sputtering, to control the diameter of the nanostructure. In this case, only nanostructures having the same diameter may be grown from the catalyst layer because the metal catalyst layer is formed having a uniform thickness on the substrate. Moreover, it is relatively difficult to fabricate nanostructures having different diameters.